First day in Ensenada, Baja California Mexico

Today was my first official day in Ensenada, Baja California. A group of us arrived this last Friday, and have been working very closely with the medical students from the Xochicalco University. Our group is comprised of three MPH student from the Fred Hutchinson University in Seattle, Washington, and four students from New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Tomorrow we will be visiting local clinics to observe how the health care system works in Mexico. We will also be formulating a few questions based on the experiences we will have in the local clinics to design a questionnaire as part of a public health intervention. We will survey around 100 locals and then analyze the data. The goal of our survey is to obtain information pertaining to cervical cancer in Mexican women and generally to have a better understanding of the common perceptions, myths, and or utilization of the "pap smear" in detecting HPV as well as cervical cancer in local Hispanic women. Stay tuned to find out how the visit to the local clinics went; until then Adios!